The Irish Women’s Sevens side aim to secure qualification for the Rio Olympics in UCD this weekend with a ringing endorsement from IRFU Director of Women’s and Sevens Rugby, Anthony Eddy.

The Women’s Olympic Sevens Repechage tournament offers a place in Rio for the overall winner, and with Ireland facing pool games against Trinidad & Tobago, Portugal, and China on Saturday, Eddy is confident that home advantage can play its part.

“Our preparation has been good and there’s some tough teams here, but the fact that we’ve got the tournament in our own backyard, we’ll have a lot of home support and as I’ve said before, they’re a very determined bunch of women,” Eddy remarked.

“They’ll be ready to do their best for their country and for themselves this weekend. I think it would be fantastic [if we qualified]. A lot of people would stand up and take recognition of what the game is. It would be a great opportunity to recruit players from outside of the traditional sector to come and play the game.”

Arguably the greatest threat to Ireland’s chances of progression in this Global Sevens Qualifier Tournament will be provided by Spain and Russia, both encountered by Ireland in the past.

The Lucy Mulhall-led outfit had the measure of the Spanish in a recent outing, and even though they are yet to register a win against the Russians, Eddy feels that his charges would be ready for the difficult challenge they pose.

“We haven’t beaten the Russians yet, but we managed to beat Spain recently so that will give us a great deal of confidence. Russia are a really good side. They’ve had a squad together for about four or five years and they’re competing on the World Series.

“They’ll be a tough team to beat, but home advantage and the girls being extremely determined and focused on getting to Rio, I’m sure they’ll give them a good run.”

Eddy also oversees the Irish Men’s Sevens squad, whose Olympic aspirations came to a disappointing end in Monaco last weekend.

They suffered a narrow quarter-final loss to eventual winners Spain in the decisive World Rugby Sevens Repechage tournament, but despite falling short in the end, the Australian native takes solace from the way Spain subsequently sealed their place in Rio.

“I take confidence from it. The fact that there is a Sevens programme operating here in the country, we’ve got a lot of rugby players, a lot of quality players here in Ireland.

“Spain have had that team on the World Series previously. It’s a really experienced team that have been together for six or seven years, so the fact that we put a programme together 18 months and developed the squad to compete at that level shows that they’ve come a long way, but we’ve still got steps to take,” Eddy added.